My food processor (a big 12 cup Kitchen Aid) has a mini bowl, which I occasionally use, so no personal recommendations for that. But when Cook's Illustrated tested the mini choppers in 2005, they liked the Kitchen Aid Chef's Chopper best. The Cuisinart Mini-Prep Plus was second, and the Cuisinart Mini-Prep was third. Their complaint about the Mini-Prep plus was that it was "jumpy" when running. And the Mini-Prep was a bit cramped for some of the jobs they tested.

The Bosch Universal Chopper was top heavy because the motor is top mounted, so it rated lower. Everything else they tested fell into the 'Not Recommended' category.

I would take these with a grain (heck a whole cellar) of salt, as the results are out of date. But I think it does confirm that Kitchen Aid and Cuisinart are probably the best brands to look at. Kitchen Aid's small appliances are usually pretty good. And Cuisinart is the go-to name in food processors.

Logged

Lynn

"Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat." Robert A. Heinlein

The only thing I don't use it for is blending soup, I have an immersion blender for that.

Whisking eggs -- I never though of using a food processor for that, but with a mini? How easy would that be for scrambled eggs/omelets, etc. instead of using a hand whisker.

THANKS!

Chalk an extra point up for getting a mini. 3 eggs in my large FP doesn't seem worth the trouble.

I am so lazy! I mix eggs for scrambled or an omelet directly in the skillet. I just put oil or butter, heat it up, break the eggs in and stir them up to mix them. They mix easily and thoroughly. I use the non scratch egg turner because I have a non stick pan. That way, no bowl or cup for mixing, no whisk, no processor. just me and my pan and the egg turner.

I have one of those little immersion blenders and a vita mix blender food processor. I was going to use the blender for making things like hummus or blended soups but never have, so far (Oh, it's been about 5 years) and the vita mix we use for making green drinks with veggies.

« Last Edit: April 28, 2013, 11:20:18 AM by Bijou »

Logged

I've never knitted anything I could recognize when it was finished. Actually, I've never finished anything, much to my family's relief.

I finally broke down and got a Cuisinart 7-cup food processor. I used to just have the KitchenAid small chopper but the Cuisinart just was calling my name.

So far, I have used it for dough (comes together in the blink of an eye) and various dips and spreads. My mom used it this week to make short work of cooked chicken breasts for chicken salad.

It fits on my counter so much better than my big KitchenAid mixer. I will try to use it as much as possible except for batters and such that require dragging the KA up from the basement where it has to live.

I have the Ninja set too, love it. Excellent for smoothies, hummus, and chopping vegetables for soup (carrots, celery, onion, beans). Since it really chops the veg into small to tiny pieces, I don't use it if I want bigger pieces for stir fries or whatever.

The Ninja definitely beat out my blender for smoothies, since it's able to cut through still-frozen fruit where I always had to mostly defrost the fruit before using a blender and never mind adding ice, it couldn't handle that. Similarly, the blender had big problems with cavitation if I tried to make a single batch of hummus - to avoid that, I'd have to double the recipe and we just can't eat that much hummus!

I wouldn't use a food processor to do egg whites for meringue or pavlova unless the bowl is made of glass. Plastic tends to build up a film of oil, which stops egg whites from fluffing enough.

My food processor is a Sunbeam Cafe series with a 1500w motor. It weighs a ton, but it is fantastic. I use it for anything where small fine bits are needed. I haven't tried it for pastry yet, but I will one day. It has about 8 blades in a built-in drawer, and I also have the optional add-on fruit juicer.

I also have a large mixer, a stick blender and a regular blender. The stick is great for soups, and the mixer gets used for cakes, egg whites etc. I really don't use the blender that often.

I have a Cuisinart 7-cup food processor that I've had for, oh, five years now. I finally made room for it on the counter because my husband and I realized we just wouldn't use it otherwise (that sucker is heavy, and it ended up in in the back of a lower cabinet).

Now that it's out and easily accessible, we probably use it at least once a week or so. My husband likes to use it for chopping things when we need a whole lot. I like to use it for grating a whole bunch of cheese at once, or whenever I need very uniformly sliced vegetables. I also sometimes use it to shred vegetables when that's necessary. We also sometimes use it to make breadcrumbs.

When I make salsa, I do it in the food processor, but I haven't made salsa in years. I also make pie crust in there, because I'm phenomenally bad at cutting butter into flour, and the food processor does it fantastically in approximately half a second. I don't make a ton of pie crust, though, because I have yet to make one that is actually better than what I can buy. When I need meringue, I use the food processor because I don't have a mixer (handheld or otherwise), and there's no way I'm going to beat egg whites into stiff peaks by hand. The Cuisinart is never going to get me stiff-peaked meringue, but it does soft-peaks just fine.

The only blender we have is an immersion blender, so we use the food processor for a lot of things other people probably use blenders for. I like the combo of food processor and immersion blender, because the immersion blender fits in a drawer (and is easier to wash), and the food processor is capable of doing more stuff than a blender.

I do eventually want to get a stand mixer so that I can do things like mix doughs (I've never really tried with my Cuisinart, but I don't think it would work especially well) and make actually stiff-peaked meringue or homemade whipped cream. But that will have to wait until I have more money and more counter space.

I go through cycles on using my food processor, but right now we use it a lot. Two dishes that I make that I haven't seen mentioned here that I use my food processor for is various types of kugels (potato, cauliflower, etc - not the noodle kugels) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kugel) and vegetarian kishke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kishke).

I also use it to shred eggplant to use as filling in certain beef dishes - helps cut back on how much meat we are eating and adds some extra vitamins.

Logged

"The test of good manners is to be patient with bad ones" - Solomon ibn Gabirol